[Osiris]

You're assuming that people would drop cable and buy through streaming as opposed to maintaining the same 28M subscribers and ADD additional streaming customers. If they charged $9/mn, I have a hard time seeing how that could be a net loss. Even if some subscribers switch from cable to streaming, they wouldn't lose revenue.

The only way they could lose revenue is if current subscribers dropped cable and didn't go with streaming, which seems unlikely to me.

[wpietri]

You're not thinking of this from the perspective of a cable company.

Cable companies are already losing subscribers. They will do everything they can to discourage people from defecting to broadband downloads. One of the most obvious things they can do is to have exclusive content. Which means they would be smart to put immense pressure on HBO to stay out of the distribution business.

[_delirium]

Depends to some extent on what the cable companies do. If they lose their exclusive relationship with HBO, they might move towards giving HBO a worse deal, in terms of bundling and revenue share, which could be a significant hit, at least near-term.